TI2025 Western Europe: Teams to look out for

Western Europe used to be the toughest region to play qualifier rounds in. Historically, The International regional qualifiers here were the most stacked, from open to closed rounds.

However, something has changed, especially over the last year. The teams from Eastern Europe dominated this season. The region is bound to be represented by at least four teams at The International 2025 (TI2025), and up to two more could join them via Western Europe qualifiers.

Two regions received two qualifier slots each for this year’s TI, Southeast Asia and Western Europe. But since Valve has discontinued the Dota Pro Circuit, the regional lock rule has gone out the window as well. This year, we witnessed the most regional swaps when it comes down to qualifiers and the most inconsistencies between Tournament organisers. Some have seven separate regional qualifiers, with Middle East and South Asia getting their own brackets, some are down to five, merging North and South America in one, while the TI has the traditional six regional split.

On top of that, this year, the TI qualifiers overlap with Esports World Cup qualifiers. These are the two biggest tournaments of the year, the two biggest objectives every team worked the entire year to reach. Therefore, everyone will take any opportunity that might give them a slight edge. For TI, the opportunity came with the two slots in WEU as opposed to just one slot in EEU. Hence, some teams did everything possible to increase their chances to get to both events this year.

Virtus.pro and NAVI Junior, for Instance, declined the invitation to play in EEU, where there was only one slot and Aurora Gaming was the uncontested front runner, and chose to go through open qualifiers in Western Europe. 1win, Yellow Submarine and 4Pirates, who are all EEU teams, have done the same and reached the closed qualifiers. Five of the six open qualifier slots in WEU were claimed by EEU squads. Team Secret is the sixth competitor coming from opens qualifiers, and the only WEU team to have reached the closed qualifiers.

TI2025 WEU closed qualifiers feature 10 teams fighting for two slots. However, half of these teams are in fact from the Eastern European region.

TI2025 Western Europe closed qualifiers participating teams

Although it might seem easier to qualify for TI2025 via Western Europe because of the extra slot, the competition is, as always, quite fierce. Nigma Galaxy, OG Avulus, Team Secret and MOUZ are the five WEU teams who will fight alongside the five migrating from EEU.

One of the biggest contenders here is Nigma Galaxy, who is slowly getting back in shape. They’ve been on the rise through the last couple of months, and along with Avulus, are the only teams from WEU qualifiers who have constantly been to tier one LANs this year, and that might be enough to give them an edge now.

Team Secret might have had a disastrous year, with no LAN presence so far, but this is Clement "Puppey" Ivanov’s team, and nobody should ever count them out. Puppey has done the impossible once before, when Team Secret went all the way from Last Chance qualifiers to grand finals at TI2022.

OG are also notorious for their resilience and for making incredible sprints from open qualifiers to becoming TI champions. In 2018 and 2019, OG wrote history by becoming the only team to win TI back-to-back. More so, they won TI8 coming from open qualifiers. Of course, one can argue that they have a very different roster now, but the heart and soul of OG, Johan "N0tail" Sundstein is back to Dota, taking the coaching role.

MOUZ is back to Dota 2

And then, there’s MOUZ. The Dota 2 veteran fans might remember MOUZ’s habit of signing a Dota 2 team just before The International. However, this year seems a bit different. This year, the TI is held in their backyard, in Hamburg, Germany, and MOUZ have been prepared for this movement the whole season long. The German organisation reunited Melchior "Seleri" Hillenkamp and Daniel "ImmortalFaith" Moza and built a team around them and their synergy.

Seleri is Gaimin Gladiator’s former captain. With him, Gaimin were one of the most dominant teams Dota 2 has ever had. They fell short of a TI title in 2023 and 2024, but both years they went in as favourites after dominating the seasons with three Major titles won back to back. Seleri is also a defending champion at the Esports World Cup. Lifting the trophy last year assured a direct invite to GG to this year’s edition of EWC.

In the meantime, he left the team and is willing to put in the hard work again, alongside ImmortalFaith, the coach who is responsible for the initial boom of Gaimin. Back in 2020, Seleri and ImmortalFaith worked together at Vikin.gg, a small, unsponsored team that would eventually take over the WEU region and would get signed by Gaimin at the beginning of 2022.

MOUZ roster for TI2025 qualifiers

• Kyial "Kami" Tayirov
• Abed "Abed" Yusop
• Nicholas "zeal" Lim
• Marcel "Ekki" Hołowienko
• Melchior "Seleri" Hillenkamp
• coach: Daniel "ImmortalFaith" Moza

It’s a different landscape in the Western European regional qualifiers, but the battle for the two slots remains just as tough as it was in all previous years. Will it be WEU that will prevail in its own space and send two teams to TI2025? Will it be EEU to take over and prove that they made the right move to compete here, or will the slots be split? The answers will come in next week, when the qualifiers battle comes to a close. The WEU regional qualifiers will run from the 13th to the 17th of June, so stay tuned to catch all the updates and see who will claim the two tickets to The International 2025.